How to Install and Use the Facebook Pixel: A Guide for Marketers

If you’re planning on spending money on Facebook ads, wait!

Have you installed your Facebook pixel yet? No? Then this should be the first thing you do before you give Facebook a cent of your marketing budget.

If you’re a marketer, read our guide on how to install and use the Facebook pixel now.

What is the Facebook Pixel anyway?

Simply put, it’s a unique piece of code which you add to your website (most platforms have a section to add it or you can use a plugin to install it). This code tracks visitors from Facebook and their activity on your website.

Just like Google Analytics tracks visitors to your website, Facebook does the same, but for people who visit your website from your Facebook page.

Event Tracking

You can also track specific actions your users take on your website, using event tracking. This is another short piece of code and you determine what you want to track and what you want to call your code. You could track things like when people sign up to your newsletter, when they start the checkout process, make a purchase or simply visit a particular page or blog on your website.

There are different levels of codes depending on how technical you want to get. Choose from basic, recommended or advanced installation codes. Add your own custom parameters to narrow down your specific events to track.

For example you can track anyone who views your products, or you could track anyone who views your products which are over $20 in value.

Creating & Installing Your Facebook Pixel

Log in to your Facebook Ads Manager account and choose ‘Pixels’ in the Assets menu. You can only create one pixel per account so if you manage multiple business pages that you’re creating the pixel from the right account.

Click on ‘Create a Pixel’, name your pixel and click next. You’ll be shown a step by step guide to how to install your pixel depending on your website platform. If you aren’t sure what to do, most website platforms have their own instructions on how to add your Facebook pixel to your account. A quick Google will find them for you.

If you want to add custom event tracking, your next step will be to create these new snippets of code and install these on the pages you want to track the individual events.

It can take a few hours for the data to start pulling through so it’s time to grab a drink and relax (who are we kidding?).

How To Use Your Data From Facebook Analytics

The whole point of installing the Facebook pixel is to get valuable insights into how people from Facebook are interacting with your website.

Track metrics like top URL’s, session times, and devices. This will help you narrow down what content people are visiting, how long they spend on your website and what devices they’re using. If people are mostly coming from mobile devices and spending more time than those on a desktop, when you’re running paid ad campaigns on Facebook, you know that you should target mobile users over desktop ones.

When you can see what content they’re interacting with, you can use this to plan your content strategy going forward, and also know what content you should pay to promote and what you should rather leave to the mercy of Facebook’s organic reach.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to your Facebook Ads Manager and get pixelling now!